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House Rebuffs Many Budget Amendments

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The House today turned down dozens of spending bill amendments that sought to protect billions of dollars in housing and environmental programs, many of which were landmark achievements of liberal Congresses stretching back nearly a quarter-century.

"This bill is going to be very controversial without any question," said Representative Jerry Lewis, the California Republican who heads the subcommittee that wrote the bill. "But it does put us on a pathway that gives us a real shot of balancing the budget by 2002."

The spending bill provides $79.4 billion in the 1996 fiscal year, which begins on Oct. 1, for veterans benefits, housing programs and agencies dealing with science, the environment and space exploration. It cuts $10.5 billion from 1995 spending levels by eliminating dozens of programs -- including President Clinton's community service program known as AmeriCorps -- and by paring the budgets for enforcement of environmental laws like the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act and for programs on public housing, youth employment, and drug rehabilitation.

"At one point in our history we had a war on poverty," said Representative Joseph P. Kennedy 2d, Democrat of Massachusetts. "Today we have somehow evolved into a point where we have a war on the poor, and that's what this bill attempts to do."

The debate today involved one of the most diverse spending bills that Congress will face. The bill includes the budget for the Department of Veterans' Affairs and the Department of Housing and Urban Development as well as appropriations for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Science Foundation and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Except for veterans' benefits, virtually every department and agency received significant cuts to its budget under the spending bill, with environmental and housing programs bearing the brunt of the reductions.

The veterans department, the Government's third-largest agency, would lose 1 percent, or $51.8 million, from its budget, leaving it with $37.8 billion.

The E.P.A. would receive $4.87 billion, a cut of one-third, or $2.4 billion, from its 1995 budget. The bill appropriated $1 billion -- a $431 million cut -- for the agency's hazardous waste cleanup program, Superfund, and banned the addition of any new sites to the Superfund list.

Democrats complained bitterly that the Republican majority had loaded the spending bill with language and matters traditionally left to authorizing committees. Republicans brushed aside those complaints as easily as they did Democratic amendments.

But as the House Republicans were rolling to victory, their colleagues in the Senate were erecting a roadblock to some of their plans.

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"Let's try to clean up these bills from the House that have undue burdens placed on them," said Senator Mark O. Hatfield, the Oregon Republican who heads the Appropriations Committee. "We have one mission, and that is to keep the Government running."

Democrats were upset that the Republicans had included 17 riders to the bill that curtailed the E.P.A.'s enforcement authority and would force Congress to reauthorize some of the nation's major environmental laws -- the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act -- in order for those programs to receive financing.

Democrats contend that by forcing Congress to reconsider the 20-year-old environmental acts, the Republican majority will gain the opportunity to weaken them.

The housing department received $19.1 billion for 1996, but would lose one-fourth of its current budget, or $5.6 billion.

The HUD budget includes $2.5 billion for public housing modernization and $1 billion for new "special needs" housing for the elderly, the disabled and people with AIDS.

The spending bill eliminated 36 programs that Republicans argued were duplicative or wasteful. Among them were three of the Administration's benchmark initiatives: the AmeriCorps community service program; an $871 summer youth employment program; and Community Development Financial Institutions, which provided credit and investment capital to distressed neighborhoods.

Another part of the spending bill would bar HUD from developing or enforcing rules covering discrimination by insurance companies, even if the action in question had already been found to be a violation of the Fair Housing Act.

As the House worked on 1996 bills, President Clinton today signed legislation making $16 billion in cuts in 1995 spending and providing money for disaster aid in California and Oklahoma City. Mr. Clinton, who had vetoed the first version of the bill last month, said the compromise bill was "proof that we can put party politics aside and do things that are good for our country."

A version of this article appears in print on July 28, 1995, on Page A00018 of the National edition with the headline: House Rebuffs Many Budget Amendments. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe